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Hey, it's not Monday. This one's extra. It's time to face the music anyway.
Words Worth Keeping
"I'll stop when it's perfect."
— Last words.
Still working to make it "perfect."
This Week
Happy Halloween. Short one today, because some of you are in a practice room right now and I'd like you to leave it at some point. Go eat some candy corn. If that's your thing.
Meet the guy in practice room 4B. Nice guy. Very dedicated. Wants a job in a major orchestra more than anything, and he's close. Sat down one afternoon to run a single excerpt and told himself he'd get up the second it was perfect.
He got it clean on a Tuesday. Then he noticed the release on the last note was a hair early. So he ran it one more time.
That was April of last year.
Poor guy is still in there. The batteries in his metronome gave out around Thanksgiving. He didn't. The audition came and went. His classmates have jobs now. A couple of them have students. Every so often a freshman opens the door, hears the first two bars, and closes it very quietly.
He's so close to perfect. One more should do it.
The Prescription
Here's the thing under the costume. Perfectionism looks like dedication from the outside. From the inside it's mostly fear with a metronome.
Perfect is a moving target. Every time you get close, you find a new flaw to chase, because the point was never the excerpt. The point was to never have to stop and be judged. So you don't stop.
Nobody on the other side of the screen is listening for perfect. They're listening for someone who sounds like they mean it. You can't mean it when you're scared of every note that comes out of your horn.
Perfect is not the goal. Done is. Walk out of the room while you still can.
Hit reply and tell me the longest you've ever spent on one excerpt. I'll believe you.
Happy practicing (and then stopping),
Chris @ Honesty Pill Coaching
Something land? Something miss? Hit reply. I read them.
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